


Through Fraternity and Flame

by chronicAngel



Series: Through All Things [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Stag Nights & Bachelor Parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 08:57:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18546517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: "I wanted her to have a proper bachelorette party," he says, trying to be reassuring somehow, even as he thinks,Not that I really got a proper bachelor party."You know, I think it was probably on me for inviting three people who were in loving relationships. Two of those people are even dating each other, like... How dumb can I get."





	Through Fraternity and Flame

Dave knows basically the day after he proposes that he is going to have a bachelor party. John has never been particularly subtle about... well, anything, really. (He can't complain too much. He'd never have figured out Jade liked him if John had never run his big mouth about it, so it's not all bad.) So Dave asks John to be his best man and then an hour later when John asks him what his favorite alcoholic beverage is because he's "just curious" he's pretty sure he knows what's going on. (He answers that it's Fireball whiskey anyway, though.)

He, John, Karkat, and Terezi plan to go to some bar at five thirty (and he pretends he doesn't notice Jade's nose wrinkle whenever he brings it up). Karkat is the designated driver, though Terezi offers several times and actually almost tricks him once. He's one of the only idiots who has gotten into a car with her behind the wheel and he doesn't think a stern "Never again" can accurately represent his horror at the possibility of the situation.

Jade sits in his lap and kisses him breathless until they hear the knock on the door, and he practically has to pry his hands away from her sides to let her get up and answer it, sitting in the bed and watching after her while he fights to catch his breath. _God, I can't wait to marry you,_ he thinks, biting his lip. Finally, after a minute, he pushes himself out of the bed and trails after her into the living room.

She ties his bowtie for him (and he knows how but he finds it so endearing when she does it for him) and he wants to kiss her but before he has fully formed the thought she is threatening Karkat with legal action with Terezi as her prosecutor (more terrifying than death) if he's home late and Karkat honestly looks like he's about to piss himself.

The second the door closes behind them, Karkat lets out a little sigh of relief and Terezi cackles behind him despite the fact that she can't _see_ the change in his posture. He guesses that after knowing each other so long she must just _know_. "Wow, Karkat, I didn't know that you were so terrified of tiny girls saying mean things to you."

He scowls back at her. "You're fucking 5'2", yes you did." She laughs harder and all of them trail after him to the car. Dave would normally happily crawl into one of the backseats so he wouldn't have to listen to Terezi whine and pout when she couldn't hold Karkat's hand while he was driving, but she is surprisingly the one who practically shoves him into the passenger seat. "So, McSorley's?" He asks over his shoulder, glancing at John, who Dave supposes must nod because he looks back at the street ahead of him and starts driving. For how angry he is the rest of the time, Dave is always surprised by how calm Karkat is when driving. (In contrast, Dave is chill most of the time but knows how awful his road rage can get.)

He is pretty sure "two albinos, a blind woman, and a perfectly normal white dude walk into a bar" is the start to a terrible joke. (To be fair to John, he's only half-white, but boy does he look _white_.) He's not sure what the punchline is yet, though, and he's terrified to find out because wherever it's going it can't be good.

"We need four beers and some sort of crown or something," Terezi says to the bartender before John can even open his mouth, and Dave is already terrified. "It's this man's bachelor party! Come on!" She has no sense of volume control (and you'd think a _blind woman_ who relies at least 25% on her sense of hearing would know how to be quiet) and so the noise in the bar seems to stutter for a second before doubling in volume as everybody cheers. Suddenly, he has people he's never even seen before coming up to him and congratulating him and asking him about his bride-to-be.

"Her name is Jade," he answers to one dude, smiling softly, and he barely restrains himself from punching the guy in the nose like he's in highschool again when his only response is "Sounds hot". John intervenes in time and drags him off to the bar, shoving him down on a stool between himself and Terezi. "I haven't really been to a bar since college!" He has to yell to be heard. John just raises a brow at him. "Jade doesn't drink! You'd think as her brother you'd know that!" John shrugs sheepishly and downs the last third of his glass of lukewarm beer in one go before gesturing at the bartender.

"I just learned that my man here hasn't been to a bar in forever! Can you get us a round of shots of Fireball and whatever the special for tonight is?" Dave pinches the bridge of his nose and just waits for the drinks to be brought to them. In the next three hours that they're at the bar, he only has two shots and the special (which is some sort of daiquiri and he has to admit that it is pretty nice) while John and Terezi finish up the rest of that round, and the next round of shots that they order (they don't even seem to notice that Dave doesn't have any), and another beer each. Not only that, but John is a notorious lightweight, so he's basically hammered while Terezi is at least half-drunk. She gets some sort of vodka soda where instead of club soda it's just actual soda, though he can't tell what it is other than some bright ass red drink.

She's only halfway through it before Karkat finally intervenes and says that they should go before John passes out and they have to fireman carry him out. (He and Dave exchange a look and a nod and push their respective idiots toward the door after Karkat sighs and drops the money for their drinks on the counter.)

"Waaaaaait!" John whines as they're all climbing into the car, and Dave has to do his seat belt for him because he can't find the buckle and really, it's fucking hilarious to watch but they actually do need to leave eventually. "It's only eight thirtyyyy! We should go out and do some more stuff!"

"And let you get us arrested for public intoxication the night before my wedding? Maybe another time bud," Dave counters, but he has to admit that he doesn't really want to go home yet. (Not that he isn't always dying to see Jade-- he is-- but he doesn't really want to interrupt whatever she and the girls are up to in case they've retreated back to the apartment even though he's positive none of _them_ are drunk.)

Terezi is the one who pipes up with a solution, "Heyyyyyy! Let's go to the store! Most stores are ghost towns by 8:30, we'll be home free." And Dave remembers that Jade _has_ been bugging him to get a rug for their bedroom lately (actually, basically as long as they've lived in an apartment with a bedroom that has a hardwood floor) so he looks at Karkat and nods and he just shrugs and speeds off toward the nearest Walmart.

As it turns out, the nearest Walmart is twenty minutes away (and he doesn't know how that can even be _possible_ in such a big city but here they are), but at the very least they find parking almost immediately so John and Terezi lean against each other so they don't stumble so much when they go inside and Dave buries his face in his hands. _This is the fucking worst,_ he thinks, running his hands up through his hair and then making a beeline for wherever Walmart keeps its rugs (only he already rarely goes to Walmart and this one is from the fucking Twilight Zone or something so he's basically completely lost).

"Daaaaave! Check it out!" John and Terezi have both put on stupid hats from the aisle that they're walking through (it's not a hat aisle necessarily but some sort of... costume aisle? In the middle of April?) and for just a moment he narrows his eyes and hopes that they'll get head lice. Then he just sighs, grabs a plastic crown with synthetic feathers on it (it looks like something that a six-year-old girl would wear to her birthday party but it's much less likely to have head lice so it's what he chooses), and puts it on his head. Karkat is not swayed.

"You guys are all idiots," he groans instead and wanders off, and _oh no, oh God, he has no idea how they're going to find each other when they need to leave, fuck, Karkat come back._

Also, you know, he just left him alone with these smashed toddlers.

John grabs his arm to stop him from walking any time he sees something he thinks is cool, which is basically everything, and Dave is pretty sure he's gonna have bruises by the end of the night but it's fine, he guesses. "Duuuuuude," he says once more, snatching Dave's wrist to pull him back and then staring, mesmerized, at a desk. "Isn't this desk cool? It's a shame you don't have space in your apartment for it." _Or, you know, $119.99 to blow on a desk right now._

"What! I wanna see!" Terezi says, rushing over, and John gestures for her to come over before he realizes the joke and then just pouts at her. She beams back, and then latches onto Dave's arm to lead him away from it. He supposes that because Karkat isn't here ( _God Vantas please come back I cannot deal with this by myself_ ), he's the next best option to cling to.

He thinks he must spend at least an hour in this damn Walmart before he finally finds a rug that's acceptable (or, you know, a rug at all) and rushes for _sweet freedom_ at the self-checkout before he realizes that _fuck, they still need to find where the hell Karkat is_. How can it be possible that such a generally loud little prick can be so hard to find?

It's another fifteen minutes before they catch Karkat, who lingers around the snack aisle, staring down a bag of jelly beans which Dave just sighs and grabs (it'd be more convenient for him personally if Karkat happened to crave them three days from now when they were on super sale but this is fine if it means he can just leave).

Finally, he throws the rug in the back of the car and it's almost ten and he's so ready to just go home until John yells, "We should go to Waffle House!" And before he can open his mouth to protest, his stomach growls loud enough that Karkat can hear it from the driver's seat and so he is dragged off to another location when he'd really just like to go home and lay down with his fiancée, for fuck's sake.

They arrange themselves around the booth in such a way that Terezi is basically in Karkat's lap because even though John could have just sat next to him, he smooshes himself into the same side as the two of them.

Terezi doesn't seem to be complaining, and by the time they've ordered and their food has arrived at the table, Karkat and Terezi are making out despite the fact that Karkat is completely sober and should know better. Dave just shovels down his waffles and eggs and wonders if he orders a coffee if that'll sober him up enough that he can just steal Karkat's car keys and drive himself home (fuck, he's already probably sober enough to drive but he's not risking the law when Terezi is right here and even if she remembers nothing else tomorrow she will certainly remember that).

"Dave have I ever said how happy I am that you're the one with my little sister," John says eventually, staring down at his strawberry crêpes like he's expecting them to reveal the secrets of the universe, but it'll be a blink-and-you-miss-it sort of thing. "Like, I guess I'm just glad that of all of the assholes on this planet she could have ended up with, it's an asshole I know and love and trust. And I do know and love and trust you, man. You're my best friend. So. Yeah. I'm glad it's you." Dave thinks somewhere in there was a compliment. Perhaps even a few. It didn't really make sense, though.

Karkat is actually the one who ushers them out of the Waffle House once all of the food is _finally fucking eaten_ (and that must take another hour because he's sure it's at least twenty minutes before Terezi peels herself out of Karkat's lap and she's a notoriously slow eater which is only exacerbated by her drunkenness), and Dave tries to pretend it's not just because he wants to go home and fuck his girlfriend. It doesn't seem like he'll be getting it anyway, as by the time they've started driving both John and Terezi are passed out in the back seat. Karkat glances over his shoulder at them at the first red light and then looks over at Dave before he focuses on the road when they start driving. "I'm sorry your bachelor party was a total bust," he says after a long moment of silence.

His immediately instinct is to write it off. Dismiss it and say _Oh, no, it wasn't a bust, it was totally great._ He can't really say that in good faith though. "...Yeah. It's okay. Putting alcohol in those two was a bad idea the whole time. It was just a worse idea to not then put alcohol in me." He rolls his shoulders in something like a shrug.

"I'd say, 'I'll throw you a real one sometime to make up for it,' but since you're getting married tomorrow I can't really do that. I can throw you a regular party sometime though. Make sure to keep booze away from those menaces. Actually maybe just avoid booze as a whole." He glances over at Dave at a stop sign and then shrugs. "If that's something you want, I mean. I think if I was doing it, I'd invite Jade. Which I guess is sort of against the whole point and is probably the reason that I'm not your best man and not in charge of your bachelor's part but... I dunno, I think you'd like it more that way."

"I wanted her to have a proper bachelorette party," he says, trying to be reassuring somehow, even as he thinks, _Not that I really got a proper bachelor party._ "You know, I think it was probably on me for inviting three people who were in loving relationships. Two of those people are even dating each other, like... How dumb can I get." He laughs, running his hand through his hair and yawning. "I mean, there's black lipstick smudged all over your mouth." Karkat's eyes widen and it doesn't effect his driving at all, but he can imagine him slamming on the breaks to check it in the mirror and smiles to himself.

At the next red light, he does glance up at the mirror and then narrow his eyes at Dave. "Damn it, Strider. Terezi wasn't even wearing lipstick tonight."

Dave snorts. "Yeah, but it still got you."

The rest of the car ride is silent except for Terezi's soft snoring in the backseat. It is not an unpleasant silence, though. Karkat has the courtesy to drop him off at his apartment first even though John's was first on the route, which may also be because he'll likely just harbor an Egbert tonight. It's not like it's exactly easy to wake the little bastard up. He's as heavy a sleep as his sister is.

Speaking of his sister, Dave deposits the rug on the couch haphazardly and scrambles back to their room to change into his pajamas ("pajamas" just being a t-shirt and boxers, but damn it, he's comfortable) and climb into bed with her. She lets out a quiet little groan and so he brushes his lips against the top of her head and murmurs, "Hey, beautiful." He pulls the blanket over the both of them and settles into his spot. "How was your party?"

"It was good," she mumbles, voice thick with sleep, and he laughs a little bit as she wraps an arm around him and promptly burrows into his chest. "I can't wait to marry you," she adds, and he thinks warmth fills him.

**Author's Note:**

> The actual wedding will go up... after I sleep. That'll be either this evening before the Seder or tomorrow afternoon.


End file.
